Its beyond even being a legal fiction in many situations. There is no option for most people when it comes to certain terms and conditions.
Take phones for instance. You cannot live in modern society without a phone. You will not be able to get a phone, without agreeing to one of these long terms and conditions. They come from landline providers, they come from cell phone providers, they come packaged in the box in the cell phone from prepaid phone sellers.
How is saying, you're cut off from society or you can agree to a contract designed in a way that you have no reasonable chance of actually understanding it, something we want for society?
For practical purposes, you can’t secure a dwelling without signing a long, complicated contract (be it a lease or a mortgage note). Yet dwelling is a necessity, even more so than a phone. And, in these contracts, so much more is on the line. According to your argument, you should not have to be bound by the terms of these agreements. You may indeed believe that, but I hope you can see how much of our society is based on the assumption that these agreements have force, and how far we are from moving to a state where they do not. You may wish it were otherwise, but there is essentially no chance of that change being enacted in the foreseeable future.
I know, we can't just throw out the concept of a contract with our current society and I don't think there would be a benefit in doing so. However mortgages are something that rarely have side effects surprise the signers. Terms of service seem to surprise the majority of individuals who agree to them, and as the poster above said, the idea that anyone agreeing to them understands what they agreed to is a fiction.
Why terms of service are having a different outcome is something that should be figured out and mitigated. We shouldn't just keep charging forward on something where the outcome is bad for the vast majority of individuals in society, just because we've always done it that way
I told the title company handling the closing of my first home, in 1982, that I wanted a copy of every document I'd be asked to sign 3 weeks before the closing date. They told me they had no process for doing that and they would look into it. From that day forward I never went into a real estate closing without a real estate lawyer.
Yes, I have several adjustable rate loans, and they do still surprised people, they just aren't on the level of surprise of nobody even reading it because it's too long and complicated to understand
I'm not sure I agree with the previous poster about phones, but I never signed a 50 page lease agreement. Typically they have been about three pages. Buying a house requires a bit more and a home loan requires a lot more, but it's only once you are taking a home loan out that you end up with a contract comparable to what internet companies come up with. Further, when you take out the home loan and make the purchase, there is a human being to walk you through the details. Also, I consider a house purchase to be significantly more serious than a pay-go phone.
I think there are some US states where housing rental/lease agreements are regulated to be shorter/simpler. I want to say our lease in Washington was only 3 or 4 pages. Whereas, I recall other places have been in the dozens of pages.
Of course, I'm one of the minority who reads every page of those...and everything singed when buying a house. Luckily, most title companies will supply copies ahead of time.
I read my mortgage note cover to cover, and also the Facebook T&C front to back. They both seem pretty easy to understand to me, tbh. The standard CA home purchase contract is the scariest of the three, because there are so many options that can cause huge swings in value and liability.
Take phones for instance. You cannot live in modern society without a phone. You will not be able to get a phone, without agreeing to one of these long terms and conditions. They come from landline providers, they come from cell phone providers, they come packaged in the box in the cell phone from prepaid phone sellers.
How is saying, you're cut off from society or you can agree to a contract designed in a way that you have no reasonable chance of actually understanding it, something we want for society?